Pentagram’s Emily Oberman explains the logo for Spielberg’s Ready Player One

Pentagram’s Emily Oberman and her team have designed a maze-like logo for director Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming adaptation of Ernest Cline’s dystopian novel Ready Player One. The logo combines influences including 1980s arcade games, record covers and digital 8-bit graphics and relates to the aesthetics of OASIS, the virtual world at the heart of Cline’s story. Hidden within the logo is a working maze that twists and turns though the custom typography arriving at an “easter egg” in the counter of the O.

“The book is amazing and detailed in its many many references so it, in and of itself, was a roadmap to what we should look at,” says Emily. “The hook of the book – without giving anything away – is that there is a lot of 1980 nostalgia. It is a genius move for a book that takes place in the future to be so rooted in the ephemera of the past. It allows the future to feel more familiar. So, because the 80s are kind of my jam and I have a team of smart, talented, nerds (who are the best!) we dived in and looked up every single reference in the book and scoured the internet for fan art. We also looked at Wim Crouwel’s classic New Alphabet as inspiration for our letterforms, because we needed something that did that super future past thing and was simple enough we could build a maze into it. The whole team worked on concepts and Tim Cohan and Lorenzo Fanton got the proposal to the finish line.”

With such a strong aesthetic running through the story and Spielberg’s vision of for the film, Emily and her team had to remain self-aware when developing the design. “As far as what we rejected trope-wise: we didn’t want it to be a parody of anything specific, we just wanted it to feel like a future version of something that was inspired by the 80s – and had a hint at the actual heart of the story,” she says. “And don’t forget this is for a movie directed by Steven Spielberg, so it is pretty daunting.”

Every month, ten people descend upon a basement studio in Dublin’s historic Merrion Square. The streets are lined with grand Georgian houses and pristine iron gates protect a well-kept public park. Each person is there to attend a two-day workshop organised by a tenaciously talented Welsh woman in order to learn how to make film props.

Earlier this year fashion icon Alexa Chung had her many fans reeling with the news of her own label. The campaign saw the model, muse, presenter and writer put her trend-spotting taste to use in creating her own collection. Such an exciting move from Alexa had to look slick and playful in every aspect, from the clothes to the branding, which was created by Studio Frith.

“‘Does it have to be readable?’ is a main theme in a lot of my work,” says Icelandic-born and Berlin-based graphic designer Greta Thorkels. This approach to design isn’t a usual one, but by turning design on its head Greta is carving her own eclectic graphic path.

Afrika is a design studio based in Switzerland, founded by Florian Jakober and Michael Zehnder. The studio works on a variety of projects, most recently finding itself designing custom typefaces for other studios and agencies. “It’s nice to have clients that understand as much about typography as we do. This way of working also allows us to work in bigger teams and learn a lot from everybody,” says Afrika.

If you go down to Highgate Woods in London today, you might be in for a bit of a surprise. Among the dog walkers, the frazzled parents searching for their kids and the forestry workers making sure that the ancient woodland is being preserved, you might, if you look carefully, find one of the most prolific artists and illustrators working in the UK. Highgate Woods, all 28 hectares of it, is Noma Bar’s ‘office’. Everyday, come rain or shine, the graphic artist is there, somewhere, armed with his notebooks and pens, working through ideas that will appear in their final forms in newspapers, magazines, as part of a campaign or a gallery.

Inspired by “wrong” design and a fondness for “flaws and errors”, aptly named Wrong Studio has been championing well-executed typography and graphic expertise by adding a twist of their own signature style. The studio was founded in 2013 by two colleagues, Andreas Peitersen and Jess Andersen, who decided it was time to steer things in a more personal direction. Since its launch, the duo have dabbled in various projects with a close-knit and collaborative ethos. We spoke to Andreas to find out more about some of its most studio-defining projects.